a milk glass in my hand,
  he yelled, he cursed at me
   why would I do something for my mother

and not for him, why damn it not
  just take the goddamned pill,
   swallow the leather seed of it dissolving

slow against my uvula, the hard
  edging off to chalk and choke.
   What was in his mind, he knew so little

what went on in our apartment, maybe—
  my children’s chewables,
   a brown bottle also. In Pasadena,

I would pee asleep in bed
  and dream our balcony was full
   of quicksand as a van pulled up

with kidnappers from the news
  channel, and when I fling the screen
   door to return my heavy feet

take me nowhere.

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